‘The New Hampshire North Country is part of a broader four-state region that is complicated and dynamic,’ says Rob Riley, president of the Concord-based Northern Forest Center, which focuses on economic development in the northern forest areas of New York, Vermont, Maine and New Hampshire.

‘I’m someone who’s interested in policy and operations of state government, someone who analyzes policies of state government and wants to make them better,’ says Charlie Arlinghaus, newly appointed as commissioner of the NH Department of Administrative Services.

‘I don’t like to hear talk of putting “boots on the ground.” We’re not sending in shoe leather, we’re sending in sons and daughters,’ says James Wright, former president of Dartmouth College and author of the book, ‘Enduring Vietnam: An American Generation And Its War.’

Public service ‘is a natural extension of how we’re trained as individuals who learn about the law — how it’s enacted and also what it means from a public policy point of view,’ says attorney Ovide Lamontagne.